With the FAA bureaucrats finally getting out of the way and lifting its absurd and clearly politically motiavated grounding of SpaceX, the company has wasted no time in resuming flight. Last night it completed two Starlink launches only two hours apart from opposite coasts.
First, it launched 23 satellites from Cape Canaveral, using a Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage flying on its eleventh flight and successfully landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Then, two hours later it launched 20 more Starlink satellites from Vandenberg, with a Falcon 9 first stage flying for the nineteenth time and successfully landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
With these two launches, the company has completed 100 successful launches in 2024. It had already broken its own record for the most launches by a private company in a single year when it put Starship/Superheavy into orbit on October 13th. Whether it can achieve its goal of 150 launches in this year remains uncertain, but what does it matter? SpaceX has unequivocally proven the benefits of private ownership and capitalism, now achieving as many launches as any other entire country. Russia had completed 100 launches in 1982, which was only topped last year by the United States, but only because SpaceX made it happen.
And literally the sky is the limit, since as long as SpaceX is producing revenue and profits from its effort — which it is — there is nothing to stop it from topping these numbers for decades to come.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
100 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 117 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 100 to 85.
